College Street upgrade

We’ve been seeking community feedback on street upgrade options for the section of College Street near the Awapuni shops. You can read it below, along with the report that was presented to Council at the end of August.

We’ve started some upgrades between Maxwells Line and Botanical Road, with bus bays indented into the kerb. They allow buses to drop off and collect passengers without affecting the flow of traffic. We’d planned on widening the cycleway too, however the local community raised concerns about losing carparks around the shops at Pitama Road.

In July we came back to you to ask what you think will make the stretch of road safer for all road users. There was an opportunity to tell us your preferred option, what matters most to you, and whether you want us to make changes to the time limits of parking in the area. No hearings were scheduled for this consultation.

Our consultation document outlines four options we think address some of the key concerns people have raised.

Community feedback and report to Council

321 people made submissions on proposed options to College Street around the Awapuni Shops. A report summarising these was presented to Council on 26 August. You can read it below.

At that meeting, councillors asked Council officers to work on an option which has a combination of things that were consulted on, and for a trial of some of these. We are now working on a report about what that would look like. It will be presented to Council in late September.

The current situation

This is what the area of College Street around the Awapuni shops looks like now.

College Street is a major thoroughfare in the city, carrying more than 6,000 vehicles a day. Eight schools are within 500 metres of the street, as well as major attractions including He Ara Kotahi and Victoria Esplanade.

The businesses and churches are concerned about losing parking directly in front of the shops under our original plan for College Street.

We recently conducted a parking survey on a Thursday (businesses identified this as their busiest day). It recorded the number of vehicles parking and how long they stayed for.

Parking survey results

Within 200m of the shops there are approximately 114 parking spaces. A maximum of 39 per cent were occupied at any one time.

There are approximately 33 on-street parks directly in front of the shops between Nairn Crescent and Panako Place. During the survey no more than 77 per cent of these were occupied at any one time. However, 11 parks were occupied by the same vehicle all day.

The side roads (Miles Place, Nairn Crescent, Panako Place and Pitama Road) had significant parking available.